By riakkim
As my time in Korea has increased and I increasingly acclimate to Korean society, I have felt a strong longing to meet and chat with 교포들, "gyopos," a term used for Koreans who didn't grow up in Korea. Perhaps because the glow of being in Korea has begun to fade and I feel that surreal-ness fading with it, I still have not been able to make any close "Korean-Korean" friends, despite being proficient enough in the language, and instead building close friendships with Korean-Americans, Korean-Brazillians, Korean-Australians, etc.
I've found that the gyopo community here is really its own within Korea, just as it is back home in America, both feeling that they don't really belong in either place, lending me to my post title, perpetual foreigner. I can't deny my American childhood despite growing up with Korean customs, and its frustrating to be treated coldly by many of my Korean peers as well, as Koreans can be very cold, particularly to foreigners.
Yet finding my gyopo community within Korea has also been more rewarding and comforting than my Korean-American community back home, perhaps because of the short period its been and many are only here for a short period. Yet between schools and my church community, I feel that the gyopo here feel like an even tighter community, using a mix of English and Korean as we usually do, and perhaps even looking like a group of normal Koreans on the streets, yet the mutual understanding and feeling of being considered "not a Korean" in Korea and "Korean" anywhere else in the world perhaps has a stronger effect than I ever could have imagined.
The experience of a gyopo in Korea is strange- daily interactions are no problem- I can honestly say that most people couldn't tell I'm a gyopo until further interactions follow, yet there is some sort of invisible wall that feels impossible to shatter between Koreans and us, and unless you're entirely fluent, its not even a thought that I feel I can have. Personally, I am quite frustrated because of my constantly fluctuating language ability- some weekends will be spent entirely speaking Korean, and I feel comfortable and pretty conversational, yet other weeks will be spent speaking minimal Korean, leaving my language skills broken, with strange pronounciation and a general awkwardness that tends to ensue. I feel that my Korean has had a really slow improvement after the initial burst from when I arrived, and knowing that I'm not improving as quickly as I would like has been frustrating and saddening.
Yet the best part of being a Korean-American in Korea has been the lack of stares on the streets and public acknowledgement that I don't quite belong. Walking through streets, browsing through stores, there are no questions that I'm not a Korean- no microaggressions, and it's something that I've only experienced for the first time in Korea- I feel that I've always been seen as 'different' and 'foreigner' back home in America. Yet it's still a faux sense of belonging, and I've begun to feel fatigued, honestly. Never belonging back in America, never belonging here in Korea, I still have to accept my fate as a perpetual foreigner.
